NANORAY - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about Nanoray.

NANORAY

Hi!

I’m a musician who started working out of a 600 sq apartment right outside of Omaha, who now works out of a 700 sq ft apartment outside of Denver! NANORAY was a project I gave myself to constantly stay productive and keep my attitude high, and I have not grown bored of it, not once! ive started out working with the general court-mandated drum breaks and yeah-whoos that everyone uses, but its been a great foundation to build out what my stream of consciousness begs to be put onto paper (or the piano roll), and I think people like it!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about your 2021 project titled 'Zapper'?

NANORAY

Zapper is weird. It’s an amalgamation of music projects that didn’t make the cut to show up on CETO (either because they were unfinished or didn’t fit the theme), and were later recovered after the computer they came from literally CAUGHT ON FIRE, so I spent maybe a month of so finishing tracks on a new computer, some of which I was only able to recover the .flac files for, but it seems like the effort was worth it after all. Audience response so far has been terrific!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Does the album follow a narrative/theme?

NANORAY

I think so!

Generally when I’m working on songs, I keep in mind that eventually I will want to string them into a vague “timeline”, and usually after I've amassed maybe 5 songs or so, I'll mull over what I had been working on for about a week on the direction of the album. I always wanted to try a cyber-punk-ish album, so that sort of idea sat in the back of my head while working on Zapper.

It was never really a question of what Zapper was going to end up being, which I cant say the same for my upcoming album. That's what happens when you have too many ideas!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

In your Bandcamp 'supported by' section, several comments state that 'SALMON CANNON DELUXE' is their favorite track of the project. Can you talk to us a bit about that track specifically.

NANORAY

Salmon Cannon was Lightning in a bottle for me, honestly. That track had been inspired from a lot of the old brostep tracks you would hear in Saints Row 3, but it had been forever since I played that, and I never actually bothered to go back and listen to the tracks, so I referenced what I remembered in my brain instead and ended up with something different and neat! As for it's nomenclature, I thought it'd be funny to try and partner up with Whooshh Innovations and promote how they are improving the lives of Salmon and the people who eat their flesh. They haven't cut me a check, but maybe they bought an album or two, so whatever.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Can you elaborate on the phrase, 'The digital hellscape is YOURS?'

NANORAY

Nope! The little taglines I add for each album are purposely left to audience interpretation!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

How did you get into making music?

NANORAY

I had always been working on music in some capacity, but never really in a form that allowed to be presented in a narrative way. It was usually MIDI projects ran through my SD-80 to create Touhou music, or something hobbyist like that… so yeah, Nanoray started as an exercise in creating a full album meant to be heard as a full album, and the entertainment derived from that challenge let me put out 8 albums so far. It is excellent for escapism!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What sub-genres of electronic music have been inspiring you recently?

NANORAY

I’ve been going against what people have been associating me with and have really started getting more into uptempo hardcore/ frenchcore, more of the kind of music that isn’t much about the sound, or illustrating lush atmospheres, but instead just being fucking loud and hyping the crowd up. I don’t know, something about slamming hard kicks into a crowd and enticing them to windmill their arms wildly into a mosh pit is something I’ve been finding extremely gratifying. Look at how Vön Bikrav or Lil Texas accomplish that, I would love to eventually be a sheepdog for the kind of crowd-control they do.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Can you tell us about the visual designs for your brand/album art? Thematically, several 3d/2d characters represent the art across your projects.

NANORAY

Sure!

I think it’s important to have something eye-catching and different to represent each album, so by having something with vibrancy and maybe unusual as your storefront, people will be curious enough to get drawn in.

As far as the characters themselves go, I think it’s good to make sure that they fit with the theme of the music, but sometimes, like with Gacha and Nurse, the music has to fit the art, instead. Oh by the way! The characters in Nurse and Nurse 2 are Rika and Satoko; you guys took too long to point it out, so I’m doing it instead!

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What's next for Nanoray?

NANORAY

I’m in the process of wrapping up what I want to do for Toybox and doing a release party for that somewhere in Denver. I’m also planning on doing a tour of some time in early spring along with some artists that I can’t quite reveal yet, but they’re on board with sharing a van and jamming out for a month or so. Not sure on specific dates either, but I'm addicted to Twitter so if you see me on there, you'll know as soon as I do!

ARTIST LINKS: BANDCAMP - SOUNDCLOUD - TWITTER

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